Supervisor of Elections budget and technology

1:07:46Thank you. Now it's time for uh Mr. Brian McCorkin to supervise their elections.

1:07:53I'm passing the clicker. Thank you. I don't have a time for it.

1:07:58Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Commissioners. Thank you for hosting this workshop and I truly appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I'll keep it brief in the interest of time. Um I do wanna speak to some some bragging rights about us before I speak to our challenges, if I may. I'm especially proud of our partnership between my office and the Board of County Commissioners as well as my fellow Constitutional officers. President Reagan once famously said the eight most feared words in the English language, I'm from the government, I'm here to help. Not in Pasco. I think back to it

1:08:28was just over four years ago when we were had our past presidential preference primary and COVID had just come upon our shores. Um we lost about 350 poll workers. Uh and elections aren't a suggestion that the show must go on. And they were scared and I reached out to county administration and my fellow constitutionals and asked for help. I needed election workers. And you all came through and saved me. We had election workers who had never been election workers before, had no training, and they got a battlefield training on election day. And we pulled it off. And so I'm

1:08:58forever grateful for that. Um that resulted in what's called the Civic League program. So we have county employees giving back to the community while serving as election workers. That's I'm truly grateful. grateful for that. I could go on and on. I could I could list every office uh to speak about the individual partnerships for the intertime I will pass on that. Um with regards to our budget, uh ordinarily we would have our budget done. I want that noted. We're usually pretty early, but uh we've been laser focused since late last year with with our March presidential preference primary,

1:09:29as well as we just wrapped up our statutory uh duties for the six municipal elections that we had. One race had a one vote difference, by the way, so every vote does count. And and uh I want to thank you all commissioners for serving on the campus board. Thank you, Commissioner Weightman just served. That's that's a huge, huge help. With regards to our budget, I will say I'm very, very proud that we are consistently one of the lowest cost per voters of any SOE office in the state. We continue that and and hopefully that trend continues of course Um while we are still finalizing our budget submission for the upcoming year,

1:09:59I do estimate a reduction in our current fiscal year, so it'll be a negative, so that's a good thing. You all know the way my my budget works. We live our life in two-year cycles. And so now we're in the heavy year where we have the presidential preference primary, the primary, and the the upfront money for the general. So going into the next budget year will be solely just the general and our general operations as well. things with with uh several of our ongoing challenges. Um this is not going to be a uh a new concept but growth and the impact to I I think of our office, you know,

1:10:29our staff of course, facilities, you know, the our election service center that not quite as long as you've been dealing with it. We had we had to beg and beg and beg for years and we got our new building that we share with the County Data Center. And I believe we went in there in two thousand fourteen and we're already beyond capacity uh with a hundred and twenty precincts. We literally have nowhere else to put stuff and that's only a ten year old facility. So the uh and also with early boating, you know, um Our vote by mail numbers are down, requests are down substantially from

1:10:59the past. So if we're expecting a vibrant turnout for the upcoming general election, which we do, if if voters are not gonna uh vote by mail, they're gonna vote in person, of course. Um one of the one of the theories is that it's really gonna be heavy on early voting. That's gonna be problematic for us because we use facility county facilities for early voting, as you all know, uh, and just the presidential preference primary. Primary, which had pretty low turnout, it was only one party, mind you. But the Wiregrass Ranch Athletic Complex, the parking was just there was no parking to be had. First day of early voting, I

1:11:29went over to Atlanta Lakes Recreation Center, and it was just baseball games going Little League. There was not one spot in the entire thing. So I have concerns we can well have to work with Mr. Carabal and staff going uh forward into the uh general election for that. The second thing is eight. Aging technology, also a recurring theme. We are election day early voting tabulators, our DS200s, they are on borrowed time. We've been using them for 16 years, so we implemented most of them in 2008. They are end of life and then some, quite honestly. And then also our

1:12:00what we refer to as our electronic poll books or evids. We have a few years left, we have about four or five years on that for end of life. you're talking several million dollars uh at a minimum for those two. So that's gonna have to be addressed sooner than later. Um again, thank you for the opportunity to be here and I promise I keep it brief and I did I'd be happy to answer any questions y'all have. Thank you.

1:12:25Yeah,

1:12:25good.

1:12:27Is it your next range?

1:12:35Oh

1:12:35yeah.

1:12:39I don't have anything. Well I guess I would ask, um, do you know about how many square feet of

1:12:51It's for everything. It's our election service center where we refer to our warehouse affectionately, where we keep all of our voting equipment. Uh it's where the data center is, where it's the merge building with the data centers upstairs. Um I don't have a number, Commissioner. Uh we more than we have. That's all that's all I know at this point. I'd have to have a serious thing I'd have to go back and do.

1:13:15No, for a variety of reasons. For for uh economies of scale logistics, you need to have it in one place because there's a lot of things that there's so much that we do behind the scenes. I confess I had no idea before I came to supervisor. There's a lot of things we do behind the scenes like testing each equipment, having that one place, security, uh the el everything involving elections now was perception, security is everything, so we need to have that one spot. So

1:13:38how about square foot square feet do you think you need to be

1:13:40able to do that? I'd have to I'd have to I'd have to confer with my folks. I I don't know. Uh I'd have to do analysis.

1:13:47We

1:13:47can we can

1:13:47check the facilities and work together.

1:13:51Building design to expand.

1:13:53Not my knowledge now.

1:14:03Yeah.

1:14:04All right. Okay. Let us know what that moment would be in which first I would say.

1:14:09Well do you guys?

1:14:10Thank you. It's been here.

1:14:12Thank you, appreciate it.

1:14:14Next we have uh